Collide
by Kitale
Summary: Minimal Loss. What if something went wrong while Cyrus beat up Emily and she couldn’t take it a second time. What if Reid spoke up to stop it?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Criminal Minds.

**Summary: **Minimal Loss. What if something went wrong while Cyrus beat up Emily and she couldn't take it a second time. What if Reid spoke up to stop it?

**A/N: **So this is going to be a lot different from the episode. For my story to work though, Cyrus beat her worse than what he did in the episode and she also hit her head really hard. It's going to start right after she is beaten. Yup, and that's about all you need to know. *Sigh* I really, really shouldn't start another story. Shrugs. All well.

Enjoy….

* * *

**~ Collide ~**

**Chapter 1 **

Her words haunt him. Two simple words. Two damn words that have sealed her fate. "It's me," she had said without hesitation, without fear. She knew very well what would happen to her, and he just sat there while they dragged her into another room. Why didn't he stand up? Why couldn't he be the hero for once?

He is a coward and she is brave, that was why. In certain ways they are polar opposites and Reid envies her for it. However, she of all people didn't deserve what was happening to her now. Whatever that was. The thought of it makes him feel sick and for one startling moment he sways on his feet. A hand steadies him and he shakes off the feeling dwelling at the bottom of his stomach.

"Are you okay?"

The voice soothes him. Light as a feather, an angel's song. She can't be more than fifteen, but she holds a child on her hip. He believes her name is Jessica, but he can't be sure. All of the children look alike here and it's hard to tell them apart. However, under any other circumstance he would have been able to pick her out from the crowd, but the thought of Emily getting beaten drives him into a world of hysterics, making it all the harder to breathe and impossible to think.

"I'm fine," he tells her, just barely bringing the words to life.

Jessica mistakes his fear for a different reason. "God will see us through."

But he hardly hears her. His attention is now focused on another woman who has just entered the chapel. He makes his way slowly over to her, decidedly ignoring the young girl.

Emily's beauty is marred by cuts and bruises that religious freak has bestowed on her. Her left eye is red and puffy while her lip is cut and a little swollen. He wants nothing more than to reach out and heal her with the touch of his fingers, but he knows this is impossible.

"He looks pissed," she whispers to him, her words slur together which makes him worry about her well-being. However, she assures him, "It's not as bad as it looks."

"I'm so sorry."

She turns to shake her head, and that's when he sees the heinous cut on the other side of her forehead. It's still bleeding and without thinking he reaches out to wipe the blood away. He blushes when she closes her eyes, but he soon realizes that it isn't from his touch.

"Emily?" he asks as bile catches in the back of his throat. When she sways a little, he places a hand on her shoulder and that's when she lazily opens her eyes. She looks confused, dazed. The lack of water and food probably weren't helping the matter either. "I think you might have a concussion."

It takes her forever to reply, and when she does, her voice is unrecognizable. "W-what?"

From across the room he sees Cyrus glaring at him and he knows he shouldn't be comforting her, but in all honesty Cyrus could go fuck himself. He wasn't going to let Emily down a second time. It was a split second decision, but he feels that it is worth it. He turns back to her and thinks that she looks unnaturally pale. "Emily, I think you should sit down."

But his warning comes too late, because the next thing he knows is her eyes rolling to the back of her head and in an instant she topples sideways into his arms.

* * *

**I wasn't going to make this a Reid/Emily pairing, just a friendship _but_ I will if people want me too. **

**Tell me what you think. Please? **


	2. Chapter 2

**So let me tell you how I wrote the first chapter then had no idea whatsoever on how I should continue it. And _that's_why it took me forever and a year to update it. haha. In reality, I actually forgot about it, until I read another story which inspired me to continue it. **

**Hopefully my next update won't be as long as this one. It shouldn't. **** I would really like to thank everyone who read and reviewed. means a lot. Actually, I was surprised at how many reviews I got. It made me happy =) **

**Well, Anywho, hopefully you haven't forgotten about it because here's chapter 2...**

**

* * *

**

Chapter 2

In times of a crisis, time either seems to go so fast, where you can't remember a thing in between, or it goes deathly slow and you're hyper-aware of everything around you. For a moment there is always that heart stopping pause when you realize that you are not watching a movie, but that you are living a reality. The only difference between fiction and non, nine times out of ten, the victim survives.

And this is what it feels like for Reid.

Reid opens his arms- by pure instinct- and she literally falls into them. It happens so fast, he doesn't even have a chance to panic over it. As it turns out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening.

She lays motionless in his arms and slowly he lowers her to the floor of the Chapel. He lightly touches her face, whispers her name, and prays for her to wake up. He can't do this without her, but she doesn't even stir. All too quickly, his mind blinks back to normal speed, and he is suddenly aware of the danger they are truly in. _Now, _he begins to panic over it.

"Emily?"

By now, they have managed to pull everyone's attention towards them and away from that religious freak. He's knows that they have just interrupted whatever he had plan, but he can not worry about that now. All of his attention is focused on Emily. But before he knows it, Benjamin Cyrus is looming over him, eyes burning with anger and betrayal.

"What'd you do to her?" Reid forces out, daring himself to look the older man in the eye.

"I didn't do anything God wouldn't forgive me for."

Cyrus's voice is annoyingly calm. It makes Reid want to smack him, but instead, he chooses, "She's needs a doctor. A hospital."

"What do you care?" Cyrus shoots back. "She lied to you."

"No… no….she didn't lie to _me_," he tells Cyrus with more determination than he thinks possible.

There is a beat of silence as Reid watches the older man process that information in his head. It takes him a moment – as Reid had expected for someone as dumb as Cyrus – before his eyes grow wide with realization and anger. "_You're _the FBI agent?"

For the smallest of seconds, Reid thinks of Hotch. He knows that he can blow his chances and let the team down. He is even able to hear Hotch's voice inside his head:_ don't_. It's as clear as day, but it's _exactly _what he chooses not to do. He isn't going to let Emily down a second time. This time, he's going down with her.

"God won't see you through because you weren't listening," Reid whispers, his words striking Cyrus like a whip. "Maybe if you open your eyes you would see –"

He is unable to finish, because the next thing he knows is the butt of Cyrus's gun crashing down over his head. Reid has no choice, but to join Emily in that dark abyss.

*******

Things break all the time. Glass, and dishes, and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a dog, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever.

Promises break.

Heart breaks.

People break.

Two weeks before the horrible ordeal in Colorado, Hotch had a nightmare in which two of his colleagues were held hostage. In the reverie they hadn't made it out alive. There had been blood. There had been two bodies without a face. It had scared the shit out of him, and as a result, he hadn't slept for weeks.

Now, that nightmare was the only thing he could think about. He remembers it clearly as Reid screams on the other line for help. The fact that Hotch is hyper-aware of the events unfolding in that compound building, send him into a world of hysterics. He can't handle it. Not this time.

But he isn't the only one.

Morgan, who is standing next to him, looks ready to kill someone. Rossi looks determined, but he can see the fear in the man's eyes.

Listening to Emily's crude beaten had been pure torture to sit through. And they just listened, utterly powerless to stop it. Hotch suddenly had a new definition for the word hell. And although he wasn't the one taking the beaten, he could feel her sorrow, which made it all the harder to breathe and impossible to think. But she told them she could take it, which is why they hadn't raided the compound to begin with.

He should have known that she would lie.

Because, the next thing he knows is Reid's frantic screaming on the other end. Morgan and Rossi shoot him nervous glances as if he knows all the answers. He doesn't know why they trust him, why they respect him. If anything they should be cursing him for sending two members of their team into that building alone.

Voices on the other line tear him from his thoughts. They are arguing. Something about a hospital. Something about God. And then Reid is accusing Cyrus and throwing words back in the man's face.

"Damn it," Morgan curses. "Cyrus's is going to kill him if he doesn't shut up."

Rossi lets out a heavy sigh. "I think he knows."

And as much as Hotch hates him for it, his friend is right. Almost instantly, Reid is cut off, and a second after, there's a loud thud. They are met by an enduring silence before Cyrus's voice cuts through it like a knife.

_Maybe you'll learn to respect the will of God and you –_

Unable to stand it any longer, Hotch throws the headphones off. He can't take it, and before he knows it, he is storming off the site. No one follows him, and he doesn't blame them. After all, he is heading no where. But the father he runs, the more he realizes he can't run from hell. It will always be there, scrapping the back of his feet, letting him know that it is not too far behind. And that's when his legs suddenly give out from under him, and he finds himself lying in the dirt.

The ground around him is dry and covered with little cracks. It reminds him of fault lines. It reminds him of his nightmare. He realizes then that people and objects aren't the only ones that break. The world itself is crumbling too, and it's the solid ground beneath his feet that's an illusion.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Ten minutes and thirty-one seconds.

Thirty-two seconds.

Thirty-three.

Thirty-four.

Emily makes an indignant noise then, and Reid stops counting. He's been awake for ten minutes – give or take – longer than she has, which worries him. He isn't sure how long he himself has been out. It could have been minutes, hours, or even days. The thought only sends him into a world of hysterics because he _needs _to know the exact time. Emily could very well have a grade III concussion, though he's hoping it's only a grade II, and if that's the case, she needs a doctor.

And not to mention the fact that Cyrus is doing God knows what. For all he knows the psychotic man was planning to blow up the place in the next hour. And where is he? He's stuck in a damn closet or something of that nature. So while that man plans to send them all to their death, he's stuck in a dingy looking room. If they die, it will be his fault.

His fault.

But fuck them all. Fuck them for evening putting him in this situation to begin with. Emily could have died if he didn't pick her side, but on the other hand, they can both die now because he isn't out there convincing Cyrus not to blow the chapel to pieces. See. He's in a lose, lose situation, and it's making him sick. Either way he loses, but hadn't he known this from the start?

Just then, Emily starts to cough harshly. It isn't until she starts to jerk violently, that he's aware she's choking on her own vomit. He carefully rolls her onto her side as he doesn't want to hurt her anymore, but the groan she chokes out tells him that he has done just that. So as she empties her stomach, Reid slips his hand under her shirt and runs it up her side. It doesn't take him long to find the bumps of what are sure to be a few broken ribs.

"Why'd you do that?" he practically shouts out her. He hates her for what she did, and though she went willingly, he can't help but feel that this is his fault. "Why'd you take _my _place?"

"Reid?" she croaks out. She sounds worse than he imagined, which makes him feel guilty. "Where… where…are…we.?"

Reid pales. "You don't remember?" When she doesn't answer him, he feels sick. She doesn't remember. On some level, it's a good thing. Right? At least for her mental health it's sort of good, but physical it's bad. Really bad.

"What happened?" Her voice is as light as a feather, and her labored breathing strikes him like a whip.

"Eh…" he hesitates because he's not sure what to tell her. So quickly, he weighs his pros and cons and decides to tell her a white lie. Not a full lie, but not the complete truth either. "You… you got hurt. But you're going to be okay."

There is a beat of silence before Emily asks her next question. "Where are we?" she repeats, slightly slurred and forced, and Reid frowns. Definitely at _least _a grade II concussion.

"Emily, I think you have a concussion. A bad one," he tells her, nearly hysteric. Her heavy intakes of breath tell him she won't stay conscious for long. "We need to get you out of here. Okay?"

She doesn't answer him for the longest time. "Wh…what's that noise?"

Other than her hacking, the only noise is silence. "What noise?"

"That…that noise," she forces out between coughs. "Buzzing."

God, he wants to throw up. "You need a doctor," he blurts out. With a concussion, ringing of the ears, prolonged memory loss, vomiting, and dizziness were all signs that you need to see a doctor.

"Where are we?" She asks for the third time.

"Nowhere." And in some ways it's true. They are in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere important. Nowhere she needs to know about. But in many ways it's a lie too because no matter how hard he tries to convince himself otherwise, they _are _going somewhere, just not where they want to go. But hey, maybe she can come visit him in hell, because he knows for a fact that he isn't going to heaven.

*******

This is how it feels when you realize you just made the worst mistake of your life: The pit of your stomach freezes, while your legs go to jelly. There's one single thud of your heart. The shape of her name, sharp as metal filings, gets caught between your teeth even as you try to force it out in a shout. Fear breathes like a monster into your ear: _Where did I see her last? What were my last words to her? Were they kind or full of hate? _And then, finally, your throat seals shut, as you swallow the fact that you've made a mistake you will never be able to fix.

See, everyone thinks that we make mistakes when we're young, but Hotch knows that we don't make any fewer when we're older. He shouldn't have sent them out to Colorado by themselves. And the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes he shouldn't have sent them at all. They should have let the locals handle it, which is why he comes to the conclusion that if they died, it will be his fault.

And he suddenly knows that if she dies, he will die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it will happen. You can't live for very long without a heart. He isn't sure when these thoughts started to develop, he can't be sure, but he does know that he has denied them for a long time. Only now has he finally considered it, and damn, he wishes he would have considered it sooner.

You don't get a second chance at life. If she dies, then he will drown in regret. He can't let her die. But things don't look so good. It has been a half hour and only Reid has woken up from sleep's abyss. Emily still has yet to wake, and with each passing second, Hotch wonders how the hell he's going to get them out of there.

The shrill sound of the phone ringing wakes him from his thoughts. Rossi reaches for it, but only Hotch notices the way he holds his breath. "Hello," Rossi answers.

"I want the name of the _other _FBI agent."

Rossi doesn't even miss a beat. "What other FBI agent?"

"Don't mess with me," Cyrus snaps. "I'll kill one of them. God will forgive me, for they both have sinned."

Hotch sees Rossi look at him, and he nods. He will not have Reid's death on his hands.

"His name is Dr. Spencer Reid," Rossi tells him. "Please, we need to know if they're all right."

"They're fine."

And before Rossi can get another word in, Cyrus hangs up the phone. As if on queue, every eye turns to Hotch for an answer. It's times like these he doesn't want to be the head of the team. Sure, he has Rossi for help on most days, but today his friend is turning to him for all the answers.

Answers he doesn't have.

However, shouts and mumbled whispers save him from having to answer their silent pleas. In the blink of an eye they all have their headphones on and are listening to Reid's and Emily's conversation. She doesn't sound well. Not at all. And as she coughs and chokes up which can only be vomit, Hotch shuts his eyes as if he too were in pain. This can't be happening. It just can't.

"We have to go in there," Morgan whispers harshly. "She needs a doctor."

"Not now." He hates himself for it, but he knows they can't. Emily and Reid aren't the only ones in there, so why does he have to keep telling himself this?

"Hotch," Morgan practically growls. "She will _die _if we –"

Thankfully, Rossi fights this battle for him. He can't fight with Morgan today because - as much as he hates it - he knows the man is right. But they can't go in. "Hotch is right," Rossi tells Morgan calmly. "We'll wait until dark. If we go in now, they'll see us coming and kill everybody. There are other lives to think about."

Morgan must hate this answer as much as he does because before they can calm him, Morgan is knocking over a table and storming off the site. Hotch doesn't go after him because he knows he'll be back. Just like he came back. And why? Because you can't run from hell.

So while he waits for Morgan to cool off, he turns to Rossi with a plan in mind. As head of the team – whether he likes it or not – he has to make himself strong because it's expected of him. He has to become confident because someone beside him is unsure. He has to turn into the person others need him to be, and this is exactly what he does because it's the only way he's getting Emily and Reid out alive.


End file.
